“I like you. You and me, we’re going to be best friends.” It is early January, and Eric Schneiderman is sitting in his 25th-floor office above Lower Manhattan, doing his best Donald Trump impression, puckering his lips into a duck face, scrunching up his nose and lowering his voice into something that resembles the president’s outer-borough growl. Schneiderman is recalling his meeting with Trump in 2010. Back then, Schneiderman was running for attorney general of New York, and Trump was still in his pre-birther, reality TV host phase. Trump had donated money to one of Schneiderman’s opponents in the Democratic...

Nothing makes theÂ middle finger-infusedÂ migrant drama at the Tijuana border look more plastic and phony than news of the real one, over in Venezuela, as real refugees pour over borders. It sounds harsh, and maybe there are a few valid sob stories among the handpicked group chosen to "challenge" the mighty yĂˇnqui empire for the "right" to open borders.Â Â Already,Â at least 158Â have been let in, but if they are anything like previous refugees being let in, it's reasonable to be skeptical.Â Â What's really harsh is the horror of the real refugees from socialism out on the Brazilian (and undoubtedly Colombian) borderlands.Â Â The story...

After a big buildup, the migrant caravan full of Central America's finest has finally arrived, and as screengrabs from local television broadcasts show, they gave America the bird. Seriously. Buried in a News 8 broadcast from San Diego was footage of illegal migrants and their supporters on the U.S. side breaching the U.S. fence on the border, waving a big Honduran flag, victory-style, and whipping out a big middle finger at America. In times past, arriving immigrants used to kiss the earth. Today, they wave the middle finger at us. Look at these photos, both from News 8 and the...

Gabriela Hernandez and her two boys joined the "migrant caravan" of travelers across Mexico toward the United States, some hoping to cross the border. This is her story of the journey, compiled from multiple visits and interviews. She is late. Gabriela Hernandez has missed the caravan marching north. As she realizes her mistake, she also knows she can't let it go. She scrounges up enough coins to pay for a taxi. Not knowing exactly where the group is, they simply head north, asking along the way in the hope they will catch up with the group. The pregnant mother of...

Connect the dots with a little history, and an alarming picture emerges of Kaine's adventures with radicals and revolutionaries in 1980s Latin America. Reports indicate that in Honduras, “Mr. Kaine embraced an interpretation of the gospel, known as liberation theology...” This wasn't mainstream “Catholic thought” at the time. It was a radical, Marxist-based ideology at odds with the Church, the pope, and the United States, but supportive of (and supported by) the Soviet Union.

It looks like President Trumpâ€™s tweets have had an effect on Mexico. Whether or not you believe that our southern neighbor will follow through, at least they realize they have a PR problem, and potentially face some serious consequences for aiding and abetting violations of our border. Â Joshua PartlowÂ andÂ David Agren, reporting in the Washington Bezos Post, totally buy into the Mexican PR effort: The Mexican government on Monday evening moved to break up the caravan of migrants moving through southern Mexico, with immigration officials registering the travelers and suggesting some could receive humanitarian visas while others would have to...

Here's some rather disturbing news from Mexico.Â Â Mexican immigration authorities are turning the other way as thousands of migrants from Central America flood immigration points headed for America. There's no real natural disaster or surge in violence in Honduras, where most of the migrants are from.Â Â This is a cold, calculated, organized effort to storm the U.S. border with thousands of illegals. BuzzFeed: For five days now hundreds of Central Americans â€“ children, women, and men, most of them from Honduras â€“ have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States.Â Â Despite...

The Mexican government has been sending thousands of Central American asylum seekers back to their conflict-ridden countries where they fear persecution, a new Amnesty International report claims. The report, based on a survey of nearly 500 people, said Mexico's National Migration Institute, INM, is violating the non-refoulement principle, an international law which bars a country to send back the asylum seekers in fear of persecution. Nearly 40 percent of those detained were in violation of non-refoulement, Amnesty International said in its report, whereas 75 percent of those detained by the INM were not informed of their right to seek asylum...

It’s called the Central American Minors Parole, or CAM. It was in response in 2014 to a wave of children fleeing gang violence in Central America and seeking asylum in the U.S. The Obama administration gave them a two-year reprieve from deportation to prepare their amnesty cases, as long as they had at least one parent living in the U.S. legally. Under the direction of the Trump administration, Homeland Security abruptly canceled the program last Wednesday. That means almost 3,000 children between the ages of 11 and 17 who were admitted under CAM are now subject to deportation. Opponents of...

The Trump administration on Wednesday shut down yet another Obama-era program — this one created to give Central American minors fleeing poverty and gang violence in their homeland temporary legal status in the United States. The “CAM parole” program was established in 2014 in response to a surprise spike in the number of unaccompanied minors and families entering the country from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The program allowed minors who did not make the cut for “refugee status” to enter the U.S. on a two-year, renewable parole if they had a parent already legally in the country.

Well, this is certainly odd. A mining company that was poised to begin work a silver mine in Guatemala was shut down by the nation’s supreme court for not consulting with the indigenous peoples in the area. That seems standard. Even in the U.S., the Keystone Pipeline had to go through consultations with local Native American tribes to ensure their sacred burial sites would not be disturbed. They protested anyway, but that’s a story for another time. The halt in production torpedoed the stock of the mining company—Tahoe Resources—and threatens the jobs for the thousands of workers who ventured to...

Immigrant-rights groups were left steaming after Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said most of the illegal immigrant children who streamed into the U.S. in recent years were “a huge scam,” abusing lax policies to gain a foothold here. Mr. Kelly also said the families in Central America and here in the U.S. who orchestrated the dangerous journeys were guilty of “human trafficking” of their own children. “Their families are actually involved in human trafficking at this point,” the tough-talking retired Marine general told...

The United States is plotting an ambitious attempt to shore up Central America, with the administration of President Donald Trump pressing Mexico to do more to stem the flow of migrants fleeing violence and poverty in the region, U.S. and Mexican officials say. Kelly, who knows Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador well from his time as chief of the U.S. Southern Command, helped the administration of former President Barack Obama design his Alliance for Prosperity. That $750-million initiative sought to curtail Central American migration through development projects as well as law-and-order funding to crack down on the region's dominant gangs....

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the MS-13 gang could be designated as a terrorist organization. Asked by Fox News's Tucker Carlson on Tuesday whether he thinks the designation would be helpful, Sessions replied, “I think so, perhaps. I believe it could qualify for that." "There are rules that I guess the State Department does to establish that," he added. El Salvador's government has already designated MS-13 a terrorist group. Sessions called the gang "one of the most violent gangs in the history of our country." “We can devastate this gang. We’re going after them," he said. "We’re not going to...

Three decades after this tiny Central American nation became the prize in a Cold War battle with Washington, Russia is once again planting its flag in Nicaragua. Over the past two years, the Russian government has added muscle to its security partnership here, selling tanks and weapons, sending troops, and building facilities intended to train Central American forces to fight drug trafficking. The Russian surge appears to be part of the Kremlin’s expansionist foreign policy. In other parts of the world, President Vladimir Putin’s administration has deployed fighter planes to help Syria’s war-battered government and stepped up peace efforts in...

U.S. officials are grappling with a 15 percent surge in illegal immigration, reflecting continued failures by the Obama administration to deter illegal immigration along the country’s southwestern border. Homeland Security officials apprehended 530,250 illegal immigrants and sent 450,954 people back to their home countries over the 12-month period that ended in September, according to figures released Friday by the Department of Homeland Security. The majority of those apprehended come from Central American countries and include 137,614 families and unaccompanied children, part of an ongoing flight from high crime and violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, which human rights advocates...

Leaving El Salvador had never been in Alberto’s plans. He and his wife had stable jobs and supportive friends and relatives, and their five children were happy. But a local gang tried to recruit one of Alberto’s sons as a drug mule and beat him up when he resisted, the family said. A gang leader approached his daughter, then 10 years old, and told her that he was going to make her his girlfriend. Then Alberto and his family received a phone call threatening to kill them if they did not turn over the children for the gang’s use. The...

The Obama administration is delaying deportation proceedings for recent immigrants in cities across the United States, allowing more than 56,000 of those who fled Central America since 2014 to remain in the country legally for several more years. The shift, described in interviews with immigration lawyers, federal officials and current and former judges, has been occurring without public attention for months. It amounts to an unannounced departure from the administration’s widely publicized pronouncements that cases tied to the so-called surge of 2014 would be rushed through the immigration courts in an effort to deter more Central Americans from entering the...

The Obama administration has expanded its already-questionable program to bring in more illegal alien children to the United States, announcing in a recent press release it will now allow illegal alien adults to be fast-tracked to the United States via its Central American Minors (CAM) program. First launched under President Obamaâ€™s executive actions on immigration in 2014, the CAM program was originally touted as a safe alternative for Central American children trying to get to the United States via human smugglers. Under the program, Central American parents living in the United States, including those who are here illegally but are...

To pick and choose which laws to follow, or to ignore the Constitutional authorities given to the federal government and to refuse to protect this nation against invasion is, in a word, irresponsible - and in some circles may be considered treasonous On the website of Norma Torres, a Democrat member of the United States Congress from Southern California, is an article bragging about the Congressional Central America Caucus meeting with Juan Orlando Hernandez, the President of Honduras. The purpose of the meeting is to followup regarding a letter signed by 77 other Members of Congress calling on President Obama...